


Under Your Skin

by alyseofwonderland (Esyla)



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: F/M, Soul Bond, broken people finding each other, less of a narrative and more of an emotion, no betas we publish first drafts like men, soul marks, soul mates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2019-04-24 18:08:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,523
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14360808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esyla/pseuds/alyseofwonderland
Summary: Soul mates aren’t real. The news says so. Research proves that there is no such thing as soul mates. Men and women in suits sit in front of governments and talk numbers and statistics.





	Under Your Skin

**Author's Note:**

> I am trying to force my muse into letting me write again. So i put on some music and this is what came out. I have literally no explanation. 
> 
> For some reason the song that made me write this is "All My Friends" by Dermont Kennedy. Something about the anguish and heartbreak and longing in his voice in this song.

Under Your Skin

 

~

 

“Why do you care so much about Frank Castle?”

 

The question heard ‘round the world. How to put into words the nebulous, monstrous, star consuming thing that stands between Karen Page and Frank Castle. Does language even have the sounds to express something that’s not rooted in logic or thought but on pure simple magnetism. Atoms that crave each other, paired on a quantum level.

 

She opens her mouth...

 

~

 

No one was born with a soul mark, that would be ridiculous. They happened when you touched for the first time. Never before puberty. A simple brush of skin and a burst of bright red colored skin. (Although it wasn’t always red, melanin and all that.)

 

The science is new, they have only been allowed to study soul marks in the last few decades. The marks aren’t perfect, aren’t the end all be all for relationships. They are an immune response to compatible immune systems with enough variation to promote healthy offspring. The marks don’t care about gender. The marks don’t care about age. They affect two thirds of the population with most not paying any heed to the marks long term.

 

The marks don’t last more than a few hours. “I see the wife gave you a goodbye kiss this morning.” “It’s sweet that you have such a cuddler boyfriend.” “Concealer is a thing you should try on your face right now.”

 

Karen has always been so unbearably pale that the touch of another is a terrifying reality for her. The first time she is in high school and the boy in the row next to her drops his pen, she picks it up and hands it to him. Her finger tips are bright red the rest of the day.

 

She learns to ignore it. Learns to be stronger than a biological response. Skin is just skin. It’s not _in charge_ , she is. It’s temporary. She deals.

 

~

.01% of the population experience marks that do not fade. They are always the first touch. Of the documented cases of a permanent marks, all have been happy couples.

~

 

Maria’s hair used to leave marks on his face in the morning. Faint red lines over his forehead and nose, bundles on his collar bone. The marks had always been faint on him. Peach against the olive of his skin. He had loved it, the gentle way she covered his life and body. It wasn’t that she was never strong, god she could be so strong; it was that she had this power. Sunlight turned into a person. The warmth in his chest made flesh. A day dream come to life.

 

The world was dark when he woke up in that hospital. His skin pale and clear. All that had been good in life was gone from this world now and he was left with only scars from wars on his body, not love.

 

It burned him.

 

He looks at the pale blankness of his skin and decides he should cover it in red.

 

~

 

Karen is thankful for Matt’s blindness. It seems like a gift. A freedom of choice. No red fingerprints can make him question himself. He is free of a pressure that nearly everyone else has ever felt. Perhaps that’s why her breath catches the first time he touches her and she watches the skin turn a soft pale pink.

 

She doesn’t tell him. Foggy doesn’t tell him. She wants to leave him free of it. At the time she tells herself its to spare him. Maybe Matthew Murdock can be the one pure thing in her life.

 

Later she knows her gut knew better.

 

Damn.

 

~

 

Brett stand before them and explains the rule. Karen opens her purse and lets a stranger dig around in the detritus of her life. They hand over anything not allowed in the room. There are rules to follow to go into the room. Things that can’t be done if they are going to see Frank Castle.

 

Don’t Cross The Red Line On The Floor.

 

~

 

Had it been red? Or was it white? What was a bridge once crossed and burned? Did these things matter?

 

It was a burst of anger. Or maybe it wasn’t.

 

Over the line and next to a bed with a picture in her hands because the man in front of her is worth something and she is the only person in the room who can see it.

 

 _Fight._ She thinks.

 

She doesn’t know who she was talking to in that moment. Herself? Frank Castle?

 

 _Fight._ She growls in the pit of her ragged soul.

 

Theirs eyes catch as one of the boys drag her back across the line. It’s not sparks. It’s not fire. It’s not a meet cute or any of those moments the movies and books have promised. It’s the silent solid nothingness of complete and perfect understanding.

 

Later, when he fights the whole world Karen wonders if she is responsible.

 

~

 

Soul marks are the work of biology. The proper term is not soul mark, it’s ‘Immuno Marking’ in academic circles. The news runs stories of people with marks who loathe each other. The most infamous serial killer only attacked those who turned his skin pink. Sunscreen with zinc has been known to stop the appearance of marks. Most make up contains zinc so everyone can live without red blotches on their faces.

 

Soul marks mean nothing. They are nothing.

 

Except under your skin.

 

~

 

“Get away from this thing. Get away from me.”

 

It’s easier to smash in a head than to open his skin and his chest again. The physicality of it all feels more like relief than sitting and drinking coffee had. Safer than looking at the stain on both of them.

 

Blood is a better red. The red he is used to. It’s dark enough to cover the red on him that will never leave.

 

~

“Who is she to you?”

 

There aren’t words for who Karen Page is. If he speaks them, breathes them into the air, then they will be real and they will have power over him. Power beyond his permanently red palm. Power beyond the gut punch it is to be in the same place as her. The clawing, aching, hungry feeling in his chest that wakes at the sight of her.

 

Frank Castle doesn’t believe in God, that’s for Red and his ilk. The God that The Devil of Hell’s Kitchen prays to and works for has demands and orders. Frank doesn’t believe in that kind of structure. He believes in the deep, hollow, space that is the universe. The gaps between molecules and heart beats.

 

The majority of the universe is empty.

 

It doesn’t care about his pain or any pain of others. It doesn’t care about the blood on his hands. It doesn’t cradle his children. Stone doesn’t care that it is mostly made of empty space. He believes in that great emptiness. The atoms of stars existing in human bodies, and still turning to ash.

 

The majority of the universe is empty.

 

Karen Page fills it.

 

That’s who she is to him. What she is to him. Beyond the redness of his skin that will not fade. She is the space between heart beats.

 

~

Soul mates aren’t real. The news says so. Research proves that there is no such thing as soul mates. Men and women in suits sit in front of governments and talk numbers and statistics.

 

Karen Page has a gun held to her, a bomb against her back, and she is unafraid. He asks her a question without speaking the words, at least not in a way that anyone else would hear. She answers. They form a plan, execute a plan, escape a death of fire and a death of bullets with hardly any words.

 

It feels like breathing. Natural, automatic, and necessary. Effortless.

 

They work together like they were made to do it, like the cosmos formed them at the same time out of the same material. If souls are real theirs are the same thing. Not two halves of a whole. The same single existence living inside two vessels.

 

~

 

Maybe other people would have called. Maybe other people would have shown up after a blood bath to reassure their loved ones of their continued existence. Maybe he should have been polite.

 

On the other side of the coin she wasn’t looking for him, not on the surface. The flowers stayed on the window sill, but they were different flowers, the same kind but a different color. He would look at them when he passed.

 

A better man would have been there. Frank decided he needed to become a person again first. Baby steps. Become a human being, then talk to your soul mate.

 

~

 

Soul mates aren’t real. Karen Page doesn’t have a soul mate. She has a soul that lives in two people. The cracks in her run all the way into Frank and twist back again.

 

She holds the door of her small apartment open to the man who was Frank Castle but is now something more. Her smile is reflected back to her.

  


**Author's Note:**

> [ Come find me on tumblr for chit chat and feels. or just general nonsense.](http://alyseofwonderland.tumblr.com/)


End file.
